The individual may be reckless. The race never can be so,
for it carries too great a burden and too high destinies, and it is only
when the gods wish to destroy or chastise a race that they first make it
mad. Not by revolutions can humanity be perfected. I might quote from
an old oracle, "The gods are never so turned away from man as when he
ascends to them by disorderly methods." Our spirits may live in the
Golden Age, but our bodily life moves on slow feet, and needs the
lantern on the path and the staff struck carefully into the darkness
before us to see that the path beyond is not a morass, and the light not
a will o' the wisp.
Other critics may say I would destroy the variety of civilization by the
inflexible application of a single idea. Well, I realize that the net
which is spread for Leviathan will not capture all the creatures of the
deep; and the complexity of human nature is such that it is impossible
to imagine a policy, however fitting in certain spheres of human
activity, which could be applied to the whole of life. What I think we
should aim at is making the co-operative idea fundamental in Irish life.
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